Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Ancient molecules guide new synapse growth
Recent research has shifted the understanding of a group of specialized molecules in the extracellular matrix, recasting them from scaffolding only to key cue-providers that help guide the formation of the nervous system. The findings are reported in the Feb. 16, 2006 Neuron by Misao Higashi, April Duckworth, Aurnab Ghose, Thomas Schwarz, Alan Tenney, David…
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Campus & Community
Depression is bad for the heart
Depression is more likely to break your heart than smoking or eating fatty food. “Recurrence of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrest, severe chest pain and other problems is more closely linked to depression than to high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes,” according to a Harvard Medical School publication. An article…
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Campus & Community
HMS researchers find how gold fights arthritis
Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than 75 years, but, until now, how the metals work has been a mystery. Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers report in the Feb. 27 issue of Nature Chemical Biology that special forms of gold, platinum, and other classes…
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Health
Study provides first physiological evidence that insulin is critical for blood vessel formation
For people with type 2 diabetes, the death rate from a first heart attack is two to three times the death rate of patients without the disease. Similarly, patients with diabetes and ischemic (reduced blood flow) heart disease have a much higher mortality rate than the general population. Now, a team of researchers at Joslin…
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Health
Protein underlies brain’s response to activity
Experience helps shape the brain, but how that happens – how synapses are remodeled in response to activity – is one of neurobiology’s biggest mysteries. Though axons and dendrites can be easily spotted waxing and waning under the microscope, the molecular middlemen working inside the cell to shape the neuron’s sinewy processes have been much…
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Campus & Community
Study says ‘widower effect’ is real
A spouse’s illness can not only be bad for your health, it can kill you, according to a new study of couples over age 65 that highlights the importance of social networks to a person’s health. The study, by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania, shows that the impact of a…
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Campus & Community
When the blues keep you awake
Your eyes do more than see. Researchers at Harvard Medical School demonstrated this by showing that your eyes are part of a light reception system that can keep you alert when sleep starts to fog your brain. When the researchers exposed people to blue light at night, this system immediately increased their alertness and performance…
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Campus & Community
Complete breast is grown from single stem cell
A complete, functioning breast has been grown from a single stem cell, by researchers in Australia. It was done in a mouse, but experts believe it won’t be long before it happens in humans. “Until now, no one has been able to take one cell and make it do everything involved in a fully-functioning, milk-producing…
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Campus & Community
HMS creates first known library of breast cancer proteins
In research that could significantly advance the pace of drug discovery in the fight against breast cancer, Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigators announced in Wednesday’s (Feb. 8) online Journal of Proteome Research that they have created the first publicly available library of reliably expressible proteins of a human disease, in this case for breast cancer.…
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Health
Computer use deleted as carpal tunnel syndrome cause
The popular belief that excessive computer use causes painful carpal tunnel syndrome has been contradicted by experts at Harvard Medical School. According to them, even as much as seven hours a day of tapping on a computer keyboard won’t increase your risk of this disabling disorder.
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Campus & Community
HMS seeks grant, fellowship nominations
Each year more than 50 postdoctoral and faculty fellowships/grants are available to the Harvard medical community by invitation only. The private foundations that fund these grants permit a limited number of individuals to be nominated for these awards. (Individuals cannot apply for these directly, but must be nominated by the institution.) In order to choose…
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Health
All placebos not created equal
While researchers usually use placebos in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of a new treatment, a trial reported in the Feb. 1, 2006 British Medical Journal pitted one placebo against another.
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Health
Less than half of U.S. health care workers get flu shots
Steffie Woolhandler, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles analyzed data from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey and found that less than half of U.S. health care workers get flu shots. From a nationally representative sample of 1,651 workers, the overall…
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Campus & Community
Drug prevents spread of genital herpes
A new type of treatment has been found to protect mice against a nasty strain of herpes virus common in humans. Because this genital virus is an important co-factor for the transmission of AIDS, the discovery could lead to inexpensive protection against the ongoing epidemic that will kill more than 3 million people this year.…
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Health
Low-dose chemotherapy plus antiangiogenesis drug has activity in advanced breast cancer
Chemotherapy given in low, frequent doses – a novel strategy called “metronomic” delivery – achieved partial shrinkage of disease in some advanced breast cancer patients when given concurrently with an angiogenesis inhibitor, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. In a pilot study of 55 patients, the combination of low-dose chemotherapy and the anti-VEGF…
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Health
Teen suicide and antidepressants
With the recent FDA warning about the use of antidepressants with children and adolescents, doctors and patients are more cautious about treating youth with antidepressants. Parents and doctors are challenged to make a balanced assessment of risk and benefits. Dr. Nancy Rappaport, Dr. Jefferson B. Prince, and Dr. Jeff Q. Bostic of the psychiatry department…
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Health
Lab moves genomic testing into the clinic
The earliest symptom of the inherited heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be sudden death at a tragically young age. Harvard Medical School researchers discovered the first human gene underlying the disorder 15 years ago, but clinical genetic testing to identify those people at risk just became available last year. About the same time, another genetic…
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Health
Dendritic spines don’t go with the flow
Neurons receive incoming signals through synapses at hundreds of dendritic spines, the lollipop-shaped structures with thin necks and bubblelike heads that stud the surface of dendrites. Each spine serves as an antenna relaying the chemical and electrical signals at the synapse to the cell body. If the din is loud enough, the entire cell will…
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Science & Tech
Early steps discovered in protein-making process
Translation, the synthesis of protein from an mRNA template, has long been considered a benign sequela to transcription. After all, dysregulation of transcription causes a multitude of human disorders, including cancer and metabolic diseases. But it turns out that translation is not so innocuous. Recent evidence has shown that dysregulation of two proteins involved in…
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Campus & Community
Violence as a health problem
“Are we a nation in which violence is out of control and will plague us and will interfere with our freedom?” asks Felton Earls, professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of human behavior and development at Harvard School of Public Health. “Violence reduces confidence that all the other things that we…
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Health
Internet discussion group provides an inspiring, supportive ‘oasis’ for people with diabetes, Joslin study shows
A study that appears in the November/December 2005 issue of The Diabetes Educator examined the impact of Joslin’s Online Discussion Boards – forums in which people with diabetes can find information and share thoughts and experiences on specific diabetes issues. Established in 1998, the free service on Joslin’s Web site (http:// www.joslin.org/) allows people from…
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Health
Moms who breastfeed may be protected from type 2 diabetes
Researchers have demonstrated that breastfeeding a child for one year may reduce a woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 15 percent. This study appeared in the Nov. 23, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. “We’ve known for a long time that breastfeeding is good for babies,” said lead author…
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Campus & Community
Waking up to how we sleep and dream
The Oct. 27, 2005 issue of the prestigious science journal Nature devotes almost 40 pages to bringing readers up-to-date on what happens during sleep. Three of the articles are by Harvard Medical School scientists who discuss such things as an on-off sleep switch, and learning while we sleep.
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Health
Brain protein may play role in innate and learned fear
In a paper published in the November 2005 issue of Cell, researchers reported that the protein stathmin is essential for the fear response – both the expression of innate fear and the formation of memory for learned fear. Previous studies had shown that the amygdala, a brain structure important for emotional responses, is the place…
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Health
International multi-center study confirms value of blood test to diagnose heart failure
Congestive heart failure, which occurs when an impaired heart muscle cannot pump blood efficiently, is a growing health problem and major cause of cardiac death. The diagnosis of heart failure may be challenging because its symptoms can overlap those of other conditions. Now a large-scale international study has demonstrated the usefulness of a blood test…
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Campus & Community
Coffee gets cleared of blood pressure risk
Harvard researchers set out to test the idea that a lot of coffee isn’t good for your circulation. They followed 155,000 female nurses for 12 years, questioning them regularly about their caffeine-drinking habits and their blood pressure. No connection was found between their coffee intake and a risky rise in blood pressure. In fact, results…
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Campus & Community
Doctors overprescribing antibiotics for sore throats
Doctors treating sore throats are overprescribing antibiotics to more than a million U.S. children annually, unnecessarily driving up health costs, promoting the rise of drug-resistant bugs, and exposing children to unnecessary drugs and their side effects. That’s the conclusion of a new study of national treatment data by faculty at Harvard Medical School and the…
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Health
Bacterium present in eyes with ‘wet’ age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 55. The majority of vision loss is due to neovascular AMD, the advanced form of the disease characterized by the formation of blood vessels in the macula, the center part of the eye’s retina. These blood vessels often leak,…